You Can Go Your Own Way, page 9
I’m on the floor. The wind was knocked out of me. He’s been nothing but a total jerk online. A meet-cute situation, this isn’t.
What does he think he’s doing here?
“Are you...” he stammers out, looking down at me and back to my mom. “Are you okay?” He turns away and starts picking up my plants, and I can’t help but scowl at the back of his jacket. He still has that stupid R.E.M. jacket. He’s scooping more of them up, broken stems and pieces of leaves and all, and none of it really matters. “I’ll pay for these. Just let me know how much.”
I glance up at my mom, who is smirking. Her eyes flit down to me, and then she gives her head a tiny nod in his direction. She winks.
Oh great.
I get to my feet just as he turns around, the little white bag in hand, plants, and what I’m guessing are now just pieces of plants, inside. The bag is a crinkled mess, not the elegant thing Ali handed to me earlier.
“Why are you here?” I wheeze out, taking a few more deep breaths.
“Um... I wanted to...” He looks like he’s reaching for something in his pocket and stops. “I was going to get a terrarium for my mom.” He looks over at Ali and my mom. “Hi, Miss Krumm, Miss Mitchell.”
“Adam,” the two of them say at the same time, grinning.
“I just... Um...” Adam stammers out. “I’m gonna go.”
“No!” my mom exclaims, taking a step forward. “We’ll have none of that. Come on, we can find you something. After what happened with Nick, it’s the least we can do here.”
“I don’t know...” He looks at me and my mom.
“It’s fine,” I grumble and walk over to the other side of the shop with Ali. It’s not fine. I came to the shop to get away from everything, not have to literally face it.
“All right.” Adam nods. “Could you uh...help me find some like, impossible-to-kill plants?” he asks my mom, stepping away from me, but still glancing back. “My mom, she loves these things but there are dead plants all over our house and the arcade. Like, everywhere.”
I snort.
“You know, Whitney,” Mom says, a grin on her face. “Why don’t you help Adam out before you leave?” The grin on her face threatens to break her face, and I know she is just loving every minute of this.
“It’s okay—”
“No, it’s fine—”
The two of us protest at the same time, and as he turns to look at me, a little smirk darts across his face. Him and that jacket, and... Heart on his T-shirt. Don’t they sing that song about dreams or something?
“I mean, if you’ve got them.” He shrugs.
“There is an art store a few blocks down that sells fake plants, you know.” I cross my arms, thinking of the Old City Art Supply shop nearby. “Made of plastic? Very unkillable.”
“You don’t know my mom,” he grumbles and I snort out a laugh. I actually do know his mom; she still hangs out with mine plenty. His eyes soften a little. “That’s um...some laugh.”
“It hasn’t changed,” I snip, my mind involuntarily flashing back to running around his neighborhood all those years ago, games of manhunt spanning city blocks, laughing under South Philly streetlights. “Let’s see what we can do.” I push ahead, trying to press past the pain that’s swirling in my chest, from a number of things. Patrick. Literally having the wind knocked out of me. Adam being here in my one safe retreat.
I glance at him, and his eyes flit up to mine.
I can still see him. The boy he was, when we were kids. Who was so broken after his dad died, and how I just wasn’t able to get through to him. I tried so hard, that winter, and those last few months of junior high. And the further we drifted apart, the more I think the two of us just resented each other for it. Me, for my friend who disappeared behind a veil of grief I couldn’t pull him from, and him, clouded in all of it.
By the time September came, we were different people. I hadn’t seen him all summer, and I’d started hanging out with a new bunch of friends those few months before we started at Central. Grief is like that, sometimes. Two people, pushing and pulling, with no one moving anywhere except away from each other.
I shake my head and stop at one of the wooden shelves along the wall opposite the register and workshop, more of that reclaimed wood look held up by upcycled black metal pipes. There are a bundle of different air plants lining the surface, their thin tendril-esque leaves pushing up and curling into one another, like slips of wrapping paper ribbon. My mom and Ali have all different shapes and sizes here, from the sort of tiny ones that line desks in offices to enormous chunky ones the size of a fist. There are a few recommended accessories framing a lot of these, small brass misters, little homemade pots, terrarium ideas.
“So these are tillandsias, which everyone calls air plants.” I pluck one of the thick, fist-size plants off the shelf, the curled-up leaves scratching against my palm and one another, making a soft crunching noise. It’s a bold shade of purple blended with an almost blue-green. “These are your unkillable plants. If your mom can kill these, then I’m not sure this place has got much for her.”
He laughs, shaking his head, and reaches out to grab it. As he gets closer to me, I get a whiff of cedar and vanilla. He looks up at me and smiles.
“How do you know so much about this?” he asks, his eyebrows quirked up. “I thought you were only into like, video games and YouTube and social media these days?”
“I’m not just all about digital marketing stuff, you know.” I cross my arms. “And I’m barely into video games.”
“Really?” He looks at me like he’s remembering something, his head cocked to the side. “I thought you at least liked Animal Crossing when we were...you know...”
He wants to say friends. I can just feel it.
“Younger?”
“I liked Mass Effect,” I say, not really wanting to say much more, not up for this walk down memory lane or whatever this is.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he starts, his eyes looking down at the floor. His hands go into his pockets, and he’s fussing with something. “You know my mom got really into that and... Well, there’s... I just... So about those posts and—”
“Where does she usually get her plants?” I ask, stopping him right there. I hear my mom suck in air through her teeth, and I look over at her, and she looks disappointed. Whatever. I didn’t ask her to throw me into all this awkwardness.
“She um...” He winces, scratching at the light stubble on his face. “She orders a lot of them in subscription boxes? Or like, off big online stores, sometimes even auction sites? They get delivered to our house in boxes that might as well say ‘please kill these for us.’ And they are way smaller.”
I sigh and shake my head.
“So these—” I take the big air plant and set it back on the shelf, the thin, long leaves making it bounce a little like a spring against the surface “—have been pretty lovingly cared for. The ones she’s getting in the mail, sometimes they’ve had a bad start. Usually, air plants are tough. Independent. Just need a little bit of water, maybe once a week, and then can be left alone.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t just water plants whenever I’m feeling thirsty?”
“I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.” I roll my eyes, fighting the urge to chuckle at that while setting the plant back down. “They can take a lot of damage, but still need a reminder that they’re cared about, you know?” I reach out and scratch one of the leaves, and turn back to Adam, who is looking at me curiously.
“Well,” he says, swallowing. “I, um, I guess I’ll take four of the little ones here?” He glances lower on the shelf and plucks a few of the smaller air plants up. They’re tiny, maybe about the size of a half dollar. “She has this—” he squints, and looks off to the side, clearing trying to remember something “—I don’t know, an iron thing with candle holders at the house, but she puts plants in it?”
“Oh.” The memory of that decoration comes back to me for whatever reason, fastened to the brick wall near the stairs in Adam’s home. It hits me with a surprising blast of sad nostalgia, and again, I’m shook by the fact that he’s even in the shop. “She still...has...that?”
“It’s a choice when it comes to decorating, I know,” he scoffs. “Ah!” His eyes widen, spotting something else, and he reaches by me, and I get hit with a blast of cedar and vanilla again. I try to wave it away.
“Excuse me,” he says, reaching, and his eyes flit to mine. His arm comes back with one of the misters, a little bronze thing. He shakes it a little. “This. This might be the key to it all.”
“Key?” I ask.
“To her actually watering them once in a while, properly.” He grins. “She usually just like, shakes them over the sink and douses them with water, and I don’t think that’s the way of things. You know how some sinks have those little spray nozzles? She uses that.”
I shake my head. Those plants.
Godspeed, little ones.
And of course I remember her sink. That sink. We used to tape the little spray lever on the nozzle, so it would be pressed on, and sit in his kitchen, waiting, giggling. I think his dad knew what we were doing, every single time we did it, and still turned the sink on, acting wildly surprised when he was sprayed with a blast of water.
I hate this.
It feels like every reference he makes, every little word, catapults me back there, to a place that doesn’t really exist anymore.
I walk with him over to the register, where my mom and Ali are both waiting, standing side by side, practically sharing the same smile. They are so embarrassing. It’s bad enough Adam Stillwater went and got hot. I don’t need them hamming it up and forcing me to navigate this situation. I hate all of this. Everything going on here.
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” my mom asks, beaming.
“I think so,” Adam says, looking down at the plants in his hands, and then briefly, up at me. My heart catches in my chest, and I hear Ali let loose a little squeak. What the hell? Why is Adam Stillwater, of all people, making me feel like a walking blush?
“Do you want these wrapped?” Mom thankfully interjects before any more noises make this awkward.
“Oh yeah...” He pulls out his phone and puts it away just as quick. “Yeah. I’ve got time. Sure.”
“How’s your family doing? You know, today? This week and all?” my mom asks, wrapping up the plants. This week? I look from Mom to Ali to Adam, and they’re all looking a bit solemn.
“It’s...you know. A day,” he sighs out. “Thank you for the flowers. I have to bring a lot of that stuff inside tomorrow. I guess I’ll see you all at the festival?” He glances at the gift bag and looks back up. Stuff...outside? “And thanks for this. My mom is gonna love it.”
He walks toward the door, that ridiculous R.E.M. jacket and logo moving farther away, his thick black boots clomping against the floor. He’s had that coat since... I’m not even sure. All I know is it was practically attached to him the summer before high school, and he never seemed to take it off in the halls. He opens the door to the shop, the bell above it singing, and looks back at me one more time.
He smiles.
The door shuts behind him, and instead of walking by the window and heading down Market Street, he stops and leans against the shop, pulling out his phone. Then he slides down to the sidewalk, a little square bit of light illuminating the dark outside.
“What’s he doing?” Ali asks either of us.
“I’m not sure—”
My phone buzzes, and he looks back in the store with a little smirk.
Oh. Oh no. I feel my heart start racing; he probably posted something. Poured more gasoline on what’s already a massive online fire for me. Acting bashful and awkward just to attack me at the right time. What fresh hell is—
Old City Pinball: Hey. I took down that post.
Old City Pinball: I’m sorry.
Old City Pinball: Thanks.
What?
I flip over to Growth and scour through my feeds, and while there are a few people still replying to the now-deleted thread, it’s gone.
Old City Pinball:
Hey everyone. Me and West Philly eSports talked. We’re cool. If you could all lay off, I’d appreciate it. I shouldn’t have lashed out like that.
Old City Pinball:
And to everyone who left behind a memento for my father at the mural...thank you. It meant more to our family than I can really say in a post.
I glance up, just in time to catch Adam getting up from the sidewalk against the shop, and walking up Market. Today. Today was the anniversary of his dad’s death. Fuck. I don’t like him, not anymore; we left that connection in the past, but if I’d known...or at least, if I’d remembered, I don’t know. Maybe I would have tried to be a little nicer with him in here? Faked it? Maybe.
“Wait,” I breathe out, and look around, and up at my mom and Ali. “I’ll be... I’ll be right back.”
“Go get him!” Ali shouts melodramatically, and oh, my God, I want to scream.
I hustle out of the plant shop and glance up Market. Adam’s a few shops down already, walking with his hands in his pockets. The snow flurries are starting to overtake the Philadelphia evening, dancing by the streetlamps and still-lit-up buildings, through the twinkling white Christmas lights and collecting in a fine dust along brick sidewalks.
“Hey!” I call after him, the cold gusts chilling my face, making my eyes water and burning my cheeks. “Adam, hey!”
He stops and turns around, his arms tightly on his sides, like he’s trying to squeeze every possible bit of heat out of that leather jacket. He does that head tilt thing again as I get closer, like a golden retriever that wants to ask a question but can’t, and looks back up Market and then at me.
“Don’t you take the El up to West Philly?” he asks, nodding at the station stop on the other side of the street.
“Yeah but...” I sigh. “Why’d you take down the post?”
He laughs, shivering a little, and shakes his head.
“I mean, come on, Whit,” he huffs, his breath pooling out in little clouds. “It’s the holidays. The festival is coming up, it’s the anniversary of...you know. What’s it all matter? None of it matters.”
He kicks at some of the snow on the brick ground, but there’s a definite pang in my chest at that comment. It’s the same thing Patrick said.
But it does matter.
“I shouldn’t have posted that in the first place. Fed those flames. I knew what I was doing. What I was doing to you.” His eyes look up at me and he shakes his head again, exhaling a cloud of chilly breath. “I hope um... I hope you have fun at Winterfest.”
He turns to walk back up Market.
“I’ll see you there?” I venture, and wince. He stops and looks back, and I try to recover quickly.
“Yeah. Yeah, you will.” He turns and keeps walking, the snow flurries dancing around the Philadelphia streetlights. I can hear his boots clomping against the red brick sidewalks, and watch the R.E.M. logo vanish around other people wandering Old City at night.
I turn back toward the shop, all the other boutiques closed, a few restaurants still open, heat lamps out on the sidewalks. When I reach Mom’s boutique, I see her and Ali fussing over some terrariums again, and they both glance up, catching me at the window. Mom tilts her head down and gives me a wide smile, and Ali squiggles around, grinning. I’m never coming back here again.
As I make my way toward the door, a spot of color on the brick sidewalk catches my eye. I glance down, a splash of yellow against the reddish brown.
I bend down and pick it up, the bag crinkling in my hand.
I glance back up the sidewalk, toward Adam, long gone, and snort out a laugh. Something I recognize from when we were kids, from Chris’s “let’s talk about our feelings” nonsense.
It’s a bag of Swedish Fish.
West Philly eSports: I’m not sure why you did what you did, but thank you.
Old City Pinball: It’s just not worth it, right?
Old City Pinball: And it’s not a big deal, really.
West Philly eSports: It is though. Those kind of posts and that kind of online drama, it gets attention. It builds followers. You were getting so many.
Old City Pinball: Hahaha, what?
Old City Pinball: I don’t care about that.
Old City Pinball: I’m only on here because Chris made me. I don’t even have a personal account for myself on anything.
West Philly eSports: What? No way.
Old City Pinball: Shrug. It’s just not for me.
Old City Pinball: Anyhow, hope it makes your life on here easier. Sorry again.
West Philly eSports: Thanks. You could have kept it up. Or should have. I mean, that’s what builds up followers. Chris would tell you that.
Old City Pinball: Please, he was mad at me that I posted it. I don’t really care about followers, and neither does he.
West Philly eSports: You should though.
Old City Pinball: I’m good.
West Philly eSports: No but hear me out. Followers are good for you. They boost your messages. They help make you popular. It gets you out there, in front of more people. I bet it would help the arcade.
Old City Pinball: Sigh. See this is where we’re different, Whit. You care about that stuff. Popularity. People paying attention to you. I don’t.
West Philly eSports: What is that supposed to mean?!
